Kaunas was a modern city with big buildings and boulevards. The Jewish people did well there. We had universities, high schools, a general hospital, old folks' homes; we were thriving.
The war started in Poland in 1939, when I was only five years old. But nothing happened to us. There was some talk in the house, but nobody believed that anything would come of it. Nobody ever believes this can happen to them.
Then the Russians invaded Kaunas. They were relatively nice and left most people alone. They took my father's store, but he still worked there. For me, it was wonderful, because it meant that I had more time with him. I was always very close to my father.
Then in June 1941, the bombs started. For three days, I remember the noise and nobody moved. My mother got a call. There were casualties. We rushed to the hospital, and I stayed with her there for three days. Our problems were just starting. The Nazis arrived, and the Lithuanians helped them liquidate the Jews. In July, we were told to move to Slabotka, a rundown suburb of Kaunas that was designated the Jewish ghetto. So my grandparents, my parents, my aunt Chava and I, all left our house and all of our belongings and moved.
The sanitation in the ghetto was terrible. We were really crowded, with eight families or so to a house. Barbed wire encircled the area, and we were guarded by soldiers. A hospital was set up right away, and my mother started working immediately. There was little to eat, so my mother used to cover her yellow star and sneak out of the ghetto to exchange some of my special hand-made clothes with the gentiles for food. If she had been caught, that would have been her end. How brave she was!
Around October, a new proclamation was released, announcing that all the Jews were to gather in Democracy Square to be enumerated and rationed more food. So on October 28, we all came out, each family standing together in the square. Helmut Rauca, the master sergeant in charge of the ghetto, arrived with a dog, a whip and a pair of white gloves. He was a terrible person, and people hid whenever they saw him. If he thought that you looked dishevelled, you wouldn't live till tomorrow. In the square, he called out "right" or "left." The purpose was to divide the families. My grandfather and aunt went to the right and my mother, father, grandmother and I went to the left.
We lost close to 11,000 that day. All those on the right were led up into the mountains surrounding Kaunas to Fort Nine where they were killed and left in ditches. Only one person escaped to tell the story.
When we heard that they were building an aerodrome at a labour camp nearby and that they needed nurses, my mother applied immediately and my mother, father, grandmother and I went. One day, after a small concert that I had sung at with my friends at the camp, my mother found me and said: "you are coming with me." To this day I always listen to her. We left the labour camp for the infirmary. The next day, trucks arrived to take away all the children and the elderly. I lost all my friends and my grandmother. The rest of us returned to the ghetto.
Kaunas was a modern city with big buildings and boulevards. The Jewish people did well there. We had universities, high schools, a general hospital, old folks' homes; we were thriving.
